The Sunday service at Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a senior pastor, is picking up steam, with the congregation punctuating their assent to the preachers and speakers on the pulpit with fervent “Yeahs!”, robust “Okays!” and the occasional “Amens!” The church on Auburn Avenue in the US National Historic Landmark District of Sweet Auburn in western Atlanta has been at the forefront of African American socio-political engagement. Its preachers voiced visions of equality during the racially segregated era in the Southern states, provided services – such as education – that were denied to the community, and preached a “social gospel” that fueled the 1960s civil rights movement.
Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church played a central role in the 1960s US civil rights movement. © Leela Jacinto, FRANCE 24 The pulpit-to-politics tradition carries on to this day with the Baptist church’s senior pastor, Rev. Raphael Warnock, who was elected to the US Senate in 2020, becoming the first African American to represent Georgia, and the first Black Democrat from a Southern state, to be elected to the upper house of Congress. With just weeks to go before the November 3 midterm elections, this Sunday sees Warnock on a roll as he leads the service.
We need everybody to vote,” he proclaims. Georgia's Democratic Senator and Ebenezer senior pastor Raphael Warnock addresses the Sunday service on October 18, 2026, at the historic Atlanta church. © Leela Jacinto, FRANCE 24 “A vote is a kind of prayer, for the world we desire for ourselves – and our children,” Warnock continues in the rhythmic, expressive cadence of southern preachers. And with that, Georgia’s senator hands over the podium to Marc Morial, head of the National Urban League, a civil rights organisation that has served the Black community since 1910.
But Georgia made history,” he notes. Democrats have had Georgia on their minds over the past few years as it has flipped from a reliably Republican “red” state to an uneven purple with the growth of liberal, educated suburban communities, including a “brain gain” influx of college-educated Black people returning to thriving Southern metropolises such as Atlanta from the rest of the country. But in order to maintain the hues of blue, Democrats need their traditional voter base to come out and vote.
Two years after Donald Trump won Georgia in the 2024 presidential election, and with the Republicans holding Congress, Democrats also have to stem the tide of legislative attempts to dilute the power of Black voters. As the US heads to the polls in the 2026 midterms, studies and editorials warn that the country is “on the cusp of eviscerating Black power”. Six decades ago, the Ebenezer Baptist Church’s star preacher, Dr.
King, launched a civil disobedience campaign to grant African Americans in the southern states their fundamental constitutional right to vote resulting in the landmark 1965 Right to Vote Act. The struggle has changed, but not ended, and Georgia is on the frontlines of the battle. It’s also a fight that has, once again, been largely left to the community to shoulder.
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